By Orson Scott Card
It has truly been a pleasure to converse — or at least take turns speaking — with Dr. Mohler. His attitude of quiet analysis is a refreshing change from the vitriol and slander that I’ve seen from so many of his denomination when they talk about my religion.
His final message is reassuring in many ways. First, his assurance that Mormons can be good citizens and should not be deprived of their right to an equal place in the American political scene should be adopted as the guideline for people of all denominations.
It is hard to think of any religion that is not persecuted somewhere. The world is full of religions because people do not agree about the nature or even the existence of divinity; yet America was founded on a commitment to the idea that differing opinions about God should not be factored into a person’s eligibility for public office.
When Dr. Mohler quotes Paul’s warning that the Church of Christ should reject “a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you,” we Mormons wholeheartedly agree. We believe, and history supports, that the “traditional Christianity” that Dr. Mohler so able explicates is remote indeed from the gospel that Paul taught.
So I am happy to accept the formulation suggested by Dr. Mohler’s last sentence: “Mormonism is not just another form of Christianity — it is incompatible with ‘traditional Christian orthodoxy.’”
Amen! Absolutely correct! We send out missionaries to every country that will allow them to enter precisely because we believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is incompatible with “traditional Christian orthodoxy.”
At the same time, we recognize that “traditional Christian orthodoxy” represents a sincere desire and effort, on the part of millions of believers throughout the world, to teach and live by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Despite our deep differences of belief over the nature of God and his plans for his children, we recognize that those who believe in the other Christian faiths have taken a giant step closer to fulfilling the intentions of our Lord. They are, in heart and mind, Christians.
We ask only the same favor in return. Let’s take that word “traditional” and make use of it. Instead of saying that we are “not Christian,” which is an obvious falsehood by any rational, widely accepted definition of the word Christian, let us agree that Mormons are “nontraditional Christians.”
We’ll live with that label quite happily, because it’s true. We are Christians, but nontraditional ones. And if we ever become traditional, we’ll have no reason to exist as a separate religion!
Meanwhile, history provides reason for optimism. The pope, while proclaiming that the Catholic Church and, despite defects, the Orthodox churches, represent the only authoritative Church of Christ, he still allows room for the “nonapostolic” Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Pentacostalists, and others that proclaim the name of Christ to be considered “Christian communities” and to have value.
It took less than 500 years for Protestantism to graduate to a “tradition” instead of a “reformation” or, in the former Catholic view, a “heresy.”
Baptists, who were once viewed as a wild-eyed sect of the American lower classes, have now been around long enough to be “traditional” right along with the older Protestant denominations.
Now we live in a world where all believers in Christ — traditional or non — are assailed and persecuted. There is no shortage of atheists in foreign countries and in America who would like to limit the ability of any believer in a revelatory religion to achieve full participation and leadership in American politics.
The intense criticism, both public and whispered, focused on President Bush precisely because he believes that God has intervened and continues to intervene in his life should be the wakeup call to all of us.
Born-again Christians and Mormons agree on this: God is alive and working in the world, and his Spirit touches the lives of the faithful, offering guidance, comfort, and even miraculous intervention. This earns Baptists and Mormons the ridicule or hatred of the anti-religious extremists, who declare that our beliefs are a form of madness and proof that we are unfit for public trust.
Call us “nontraditional Christians” and continue to encourage your communicants not to believe our doctrines; we’ll happily continue to call you “traditional Christians” and teach people why they should believe our doctrines.
But when it comes to politics, let’s make common cause to maintain the full participation in American political life of believers in a living, active God whose Spirit touches the lives of all his children.
Let’s work together to try to end the persecution of Christians throughout the world, for the enemies of Christ make no distinction between “traditional” and “nontraditional” Christians when they’re looking for targets of their fear and hatred.
On these issues, we are on the same side.
And every “traditional Christian” who, like Dr. Mohler, will include us nontraditional Christians as equally entitled to participation in all aspects of American public life, without encouraging people to vote against Mormon candidates because of their faith alone, will find that we Mormons are good friends to have in a world that is increasingly perilous for followers of Christ.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Yuri Kuchinsky, famed Canadian researcher? How about some credentials please.
Dennis: You have to read closer, Montagu was talking about someone else believing the horse never became extinct in America. I don't see where he takes that position. Correct me if I am wrong (with a quote or citation of course)
M. F. Ashley Montagu relates some traditions about the mammoth and then says:
There is even a possibility that in certain parts of the country the mammoth may have lingered on up to as recently as five hundred years ago. In several conversations with the writer, Professor William Berryman Scott, the doyen of American paleontologists, has given it as his opinion that, had the first of the Spanish discoverers of America penetrated into the interior, it is quite possible that they might have met with the living mammoth. Another distinguished American paleontologist, whose special interest is the horse, is, I understand, of the opinion that the horse never became extinct in America.14
As usual you are still an armchair/internet researcher without going to a library to look up real facts. You need to leave your seat to do real research.
You want citations: Read Montugu's books: "Anthropology and Human Nature", "The Direction of Human Development: Biological and Social Bases", and "Man: His First Million Years." Montagu in these does state his own belief that horses never suffered extinction on the American Continent. Furthermore, if he did not believe the fact he would not have quoted a "distinguished American Paleontologist".
Also thanks for the other reference to a renowned Paleontologist, Dr. William Berryman Scott, another non-LDS scholar who believes that both horses and the mammoth were here within the last 500 years pre-Columbus. I will have to find some of his books and research to check for the possibility of using him in citations in my book. You just contradicted your own statements that no non-Mormon scholar believes this. You are too funny!
Kuchinsky is editor "The North American BioFortean Review" and has been quoted in several of the peer related journals that I have been telling you about. Of course a great "google scholar" like yourself would have no way of knowing this.
When you can't address the journals given - try to change the topic. What you really need to do is learn how to do proper research.
There are so many points that you refuse to address and continue with rhetoric over substance.
Now again address the evidences given:
American Anthropologist"An Inquiry Into the Nature of Plains Indian Cultural Development" Vol. 65. No. 2 (April 1963) pp. 355-369.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "Mitochondrial DNA and the Origins of the American Horse" Vol 99 No 16 (August 6, 2002). pp. 10905-10910.
Journal of Mammalogy, "Pre-Columbian Horses from Yucatan" Vol. 38 No 2 (May 1957) p.278.
American Anthropolist, "Where Did the Plains Indians Get Their Horses/" Vol 40 No. 1 (Jan-Mar 1938) pp.112-117.
American Antiquity, "Major Revisions in the Pleistocene Age Assignments for North American Human Skeletons by c-14 Accelerator Mass Spectrometry" Vol 50 No. 1 (Jan 1985) pp. 136-140.
Journal of Archaeological Science "Radiocarbon Dating of Bone by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry" Vol 11 (1984) pp 165-170.
Science, "Accelerator Mass Spectrometry for Measurements of Long-lived Radioisotopes" Vol. 236 No. 4801 (May 1, 1987) pp. 543-550.
Southwest Journal of Anthropology "Western Prehistory in the Light of Carbon 14 Dating" Vol 7 No 3 (Autumn 1951) pp. 289-313. (Notice the Dates given to the Mount Mazama eruption).
The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal "Elephants in America" Vol 9 (Jan-Nov 1887) pp. 202-203.
Science, "Paleo-Indian Remains from Laguan de Tagua Tagua, Central Chile" Vol 161 No 3846 (Sep 13, 1968) pp. 1137-1138.
Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, "An Osseous Find at Follins Pond" (Vol 18 No 2) Jan 1957.
The Journal of Southern History, "The Indian and the Horse" Vol 21 No. 3 (Aug 1955) pp. 421-422.
The Modern Language Review, "The Polyglot Vernacular of the Canadian North West" Vol 10 No 1 (Jan 1915) pp. 88-89.
Science, "Geologic Antiquity of Man in America" Vol 93 No 2422 (May 30, 1941) pp 505-514.
That should keep you busy for a while and are all from the bibliography that I am utilizing in the composition of my New Book (as of yet untitled) that I am writing. The book deals with all aspects of the Horse and its survival in America consisting of evidences in all of their aspects: Archaeological Evidences, Dating Methods, The Indian Pony (with emphasis on the Appaloosa, Pinto and the Mustang), Folklore of the Plains Indians, Native American Horsemanship and its relationship to that of the Natives of the Asian Steppes, and Linguistic Evidences.
After you are done with these I will give you many more references. As previously stated, this is an argument that you can not win. I have spent years in my investigation and have read more about this topic than you can even imagine.
And as yet you have not addressed these evidences that I have given time and time again. How are we going to ever move on until you do your homework? You need to give answers based on substance, not rhetoric.
"Relics were discovered, July 1918, in an excavation made by the Canada Car and Foundry Company about 80 feet north from the turning
basin. Westforl. About twelve bones of a mammal and a finely made copper spearhead were found together about 40 feet below the surface of the ground. The materials found were submitted to the Geological Survey and Harlan L. Smith, archeologist, reported the results of examination as follows, "According to Mr. Lawrence I. Lambe, vertebrate paleontologist of the Geological Survey and Mr. Sternherg, preparator of paleontological specimens the bone marked B 11 . . . is of a cloven-footed animals, possibly a buffalo, or a specimen of domestic cattle....Bones marked B 10 and B 12 to B 13 inclusive, Mr. Lambe and Mr. Sternberg both pronounced to be those of a horse and not petrified. Mr. Sternberg is convinced that most of them belong to the same individual. The point with the flanged tang made of copper marked C 1 is characteristic and typical of prehistoric Indian handiwork.' (horse and mettalurgy from prehistoric indians?).
Further evidence of renegade horses in the new world was found in a burial mound in Wisconsin. A horse's skull was found buried with other
indian. artifacts which were subsequently dated to around 700 AD " (Chuck Baily, Louisiana Mounds Society Newsletter 31 March 15, 1990
Page 4)
"Survival of Pre-Columbian Horse?" Holland Hague has written to inquire if anybody has information about the possibility of the pre-Columbian horse having survived in this hemisphere. He included documentation of horse bones radiocarbon dated to A.D. years prior to Columbus that were then not followed up by the scholars involved. The pre-Columbian horse was supposed to have become extinct about 10,000 years ago, when the sabre-toothed tiger, mammoth, giant ground sloth and other large mammals in this hemisphere died out." (Lousiana Mounds Society Newsletter 29 January 1, 1990 page 5).
And then of course we have carvings of the horse found in Chichen Itza, in Peru, and rock art from the Anasazi period depicting the horse.
And then there is the evidence that you presented from "Canadian Geographic" placing horses to the time period of the Book of Mormon.
The information that you took out of context from FAIR and now the evidence presented from your post from the National Science Foundation
saying the exact same thing that Ash did in his article about the usefulness of the horse for food and nutrition.
And lets not forget Olsen’s article about the great similarities in Indian Horsemanship compared to those on the Eastern steppes and her
bafflement of the same. She couldn’t explain it.
Then we also have the finds in Wisconsin, Louisiana, 13 sites in Illinois according to the Illinois Archaeological FAUNMAP database.
We still have the sites in the Yucatan and in Peru.
Also did you read the entire article that you quoted from "Shields?" They gave quite a bit of evidence there that I as yet have not mentioned here. Why don't we just put the link here so all can read for themselves what it says:
http://www.shields-research.org/Books/Sperry/AChap18.htm
In the peer reviewed journal "American Anthropologist" (Vol 46, No.4, Oct-Dec 1944) in the article entitled, "An Indian Tradition Relating to the Mastodon" Montagu says the following:
"In the light of archaeological discoveries made during the last two decades there can scarcely be any doubt concerning the contemporaneity of man with the horse, ground-sloth, camel, mastodon and mammoth through, at least, the greater part of North and South America. The evidence that the last of these mammals to become extinct was the mammoth. There is even a possibility that in certain parts of the country the mammoth may have lingered on up to as recently as five hundred years ago" (p.568).
He also says:
"The argument is that the horse is a slow breeder, and that its enormous increase in so short a time in the post-Columbian period suggests that while the horse became an Indian domestic animal only after the Indian had learned its use from the Europeans, the stock drawn upon was primarily the native American horse" (ie, the Appaloosa, Mustang, and Indian pony) (pp. 568-569).
It appears again that you are indeed wrong and Montagu did subscribe to the notion that the American horse did survive extinction.
Again get out and try real research.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.